Martin Borch Jensen Profile picture
Aging, Systems Biology, Gene Therapy. CSO @GordianBio, doing pooled therapeutic screens in vivo. Also @impetusgrants, https://t.co/KWEUni9245. Prev K99 Fellow @BuckInstitute
Mar 31 11 tweets 3 min read
I'm struggling to wrap my head around the new Weissman lab myHSC depletion paper:
The first authors don't seem to be on twitter but hoping I can crowdsource a fun discussion. @dbgoodman @ImmunoFever @Jeff_Mold @Satpathology @CalebLareau...nature.com/articles/s4158… The premise of the paper is that immune function declines with age in part because a haematopoetic stem cell (HSC) population skewed towards myeloid lineage increases in prevalence, and that targeting this population with antibodies can restore function. Cool idea!
Jul 5, 2022 13 tweets 5 min read
If you want to build a career in biotech, should you get a PhD after college or join a company directly (as a Research Associate/RA, usually)?
There's no single answer, but I have the conversation often enough that I thought I'd share some pros/cons... (1/n) First, see this thread about different types of biopharma companies. For reasons I'll get into, I think early stage (probably founder led) biotech is your best bet unless you still want to do PhD later.
(PS if you want to be a professor, it's 💯 PhD) 2/n
Jul 3, 2022 7 tweets 2 min read
All these points resonate, for early stage biotech at least. @erlichya touches on this, but I think worth separating "industry" into different clusters that will feel quite different to someone coming from academia (still oversimplified, of course): Pharma (eg Pfizer) vs biotech:
You wear fewer hats, see less of the company but company as a whole spans wider range of expertise, fewer changes in direction, often higher income but no chance of getting rich. Both have job insecurity: pharma doesn't go die but programs do.
Jan 24, 2022 14 tweets 8 min read
#SciTwitter After a lot of research and asking around, I'm making the lab equipment recommendations 🧵 I wish I'd had 2 months ago. RT/share with a #newPI or startup 🔬⚗️🛒
Note, much of the equipment hasn't arrived yet, will add comments after actual use. -80 #freezer
Two clear winners: PHC (@panasonic) and Stirling Ultracold. Both low energy, quiet, reliable. We went with PHC because I know those to last many years, and slightly cheaper.
Thanks @MarcoJost_ @letUbeU @aryelipman #MBCBiolabs
Jan 5, 2022 9 tweets 5 min read
Something is changing about how scientific research is funded.

@Jasonmmast @endpts covers a growing set of science funding experiments: endpts.com/inside-the-mul… These include high-throughput grants (e.g. #Fast, #Impetus), new institutes (@ArcadiaScience, @AltosLabs, @arcinstitute... I guess A is for new beginnings?), and new structures like 'nonprofit startups' (@Convergent_FROs) & @newscienceorg.
Dec 27, 2021 13 tweets 8 min read
💸 98 Longevity Impetus Grants were awarded in 2021, thanks to generous donations from @juanbenet @jamesfickel @VitalikButerin @JedMcCaleb @KarlPfleger @FEhrsam and 1 anonymous donor.
I'll summarize outcomes in this thread, awardees listed in prior one: 🦸🏽 While I've been doing most of the tweeting, the Longevity Apprentices @LNuzhna @kush__sharma @edmarferreira & Tara Mei are the real heroes for running the operations.
This has been a great Apprenticeship project, merging action and exposure to research
martinborchjensen.com/apprenticeship
Sep 7, 2021 15 tweets 9 min read
Thrilled to announce the Longevity #Impetus Grants, $21M+ towards basic research that could accelerate our understanding and control of human aging.
We welcome proposals from researchers in- and outside the #Aging field. Please share!

More info: impetusgrants.com & this 🧵 Impetus Grants are $10k-500k (w max 10% overhead). Smaller requests favored, to support more projects. No project period and no strings attached. Scientists at non-profits worldwide can apply with ideas that shift perspectives & capabilities in #Aging research, starting Sep 13th.
Jun 23, 2021 7 tweets 4 min read
Arlan Richardson showing that JAX-housed mice, like humans, have undergone a dramatic improvement in #lifespan this century ... by reducing deaths from pathogens. #MindYourModels Recommends looking at lifespan data as the best indicator of husbandry quality at different institutions/sources. Mean survival should be at least 27-30 months.
Dec 20, 2020 13 tweets 8 min read
I'm often asked how to learn about #AgingBiology, which I hope this thread can address.

Will first list recommended introductory resources, then contextualize and interpret.
There's exciting progress! But also many fanciful ideas, so you can't take everything at face value. Will mostly skip the Why/philosophy of #AntiAging, since those asking for resources are likely already bought in.

If interested I wrote a Why/Why not post back in 2016: martinborchjensen.com/hypotheses/agi…, and most of the websites I'll list have a version of this discussion too.
Sep 15, 2020 11 tweets 6 min read
Very excited (enough to get up at 5am) about this Temporal Single Cell Analysis organized by @singlecellomics. First talk by the amazing Caroline Uhlers, recently snagged from MIT by @ETH_en #SCOGtempSC #SingleCell Livetweets here. Apologies in advance to any sophisticated 'ML on scSeq/spatial' presenters whose work I misinterpret/misrepresent, still a novice to that field.
Sep 6, 2020 4 tweets 3 min read
I've been hunting for a delicious decaf coffee, and @elamadej gifted me this @Timelesscoffee (thanks!). At first it looks just high-end artisanal, but then things get a bit strange... Image An apostle, sure. #CoffeeIsMyReligion and such things. A bit unusual but nice graphic design. Image
Sep 1, 2020 24 tweets 11 min read
Livetweets from the 7th Annual Aging Research and Drug Discovery conference #ARDD2020. I can't attend every talk to coverage will be intermittent. Apologies to any speakers left out! Christian Riedel from @karolinskainst presenting aging clocks. There are a lot of these, but excited to see him (A) making a human clock predicting time to death, not just age, and (B) deconvoluting both their human and model org clocks into FUNCTIONAL parameters. Sorely needed.
Jul 10, 2020 4 tweets 5 min read
Cool #Senescence paper #2, in @JCI_insight: insight.jci.org/articles/view/….

@marissa_schafer, Xu Zhang, @NKLeBRASSEUR & team dive into the details of SASP, the Senescence Associated Secretory Phenotype first discovered in the Campisi lab @BuckInstitute. SASP is a prime suspect for how #Senescent cells cause #Inflammation, #Cancer and #Fibrosis. But SASP is a mix of many secreted proteins, so the @MayoClinic looked closely at 24 factors.
1st, they show which factors are secreted by different cell types (in culture).
Jul 1, 2020 8 tweets 8 min read
Time to catch up on some #Senescence papers, starting with beautiful work by @corina_amor_MD, Judith Freucht & @JosefLeibold. They used #CART #CellTherapy to clear #Senescent cells, and you'll never guess what happened next! nature.com/articles/s4158… Just kidding, you guessed it: disease model mice got better. Props to the authors for A) inducing #Senescence in 3 different ways, B) using 2 models of #NASH/liver #Fibrosis, and C) validating their senescence observations in human samples of #Cancer and #Atherosclerosis.
Jun 4, 2020 5 tweets 4 min read
OK, looks like Democracy is safe for now, and the push for reform is making headway. There's a long road ahead, but I'll take a brief timeout to report from @NYASciences's #Phenotypic2020 virtual conference. First keynote was @OlgaTroyanskaya, presenting a range of tools for understanding #NonCoding genomic variants: DeepSEA, ExPecto, Fenrir...
Emphasizes that #ComplexDisease relies on networks and complex changes like #Aging, so we have to stop looking for 1->1 causal maps. Agree!
May 13, 2020 8 tweets 3 min read
[Thread]
Two #ASGCT20 morning sessions focused on lung delivery. Cool work, but it seems to me that the big issues for clinical stage haven't really been addressed: #AAV can target specific cell types in the lung, and multiple groups have rescued mouse models of genetic diseases. But both new and old lung-trophic capsids seem to hit T2 epithelial cells, which turn over and lose non-integrating transgenes.
May 6, 2020 25 tweets 15 min read
#ShelterInPlace #NonFiction #BookRecommendations !

Sharing takeaways and recs from recent reading blocks.

Who would I recommend this to?
👑 Everyone
🏆 Any interest in topic
🎖️ You often read on this topic
🍅 Nah

Michelin, not Amazon, style ratings = any non-🍅 is a good book. 🏆
Keynes Hayek by @NWapshott
Topic: 🌍💰
Layperson's history of JM Keynes' inventing #macroeconomics, and opposition by ppl who fear inflation > unemployment.

#Stimulus packages are <100y old
• They seem like magic, but aren't
• Fiscal policy goes beyond red vs blue Image
Mar 18, 2020 4 tweets 3 min read
In my experience, one of the more effective ways to feel better when facing #anxiety or #depression is to act selflessly. Helping others makes me feel valuable and capable. Even, and especially, when it seems I should worry about other things. Our cortisol-fueled response is to close ranks, protect our turf and mistrust strangers. That's the easy thing to do, but it only fuels the response and make us more worried. So try doing something to help someone else, just for the sake of it.
Mar 5, 2020 5 tweets 5 min read
Dear #GeneTherapy twitter, thank you for your had work enabling cures for diseases of #Aging. What's that, you aren't working on that at all? Oh but you are, and @Nicole_Paulk and I wrote an oped to explain why: cellandgene.com/doc/why-comple… #Aging is a set of biological mechanisms that cause all your tissues to decline in distinct ways, and in doing so lose physiological coherence. This process is the main risk factor for most US deaths (incl. #COVID19).
Jan 11, 2020 5 tweets 7 min read
This is a very nice piece: bit.ly/2TcSZz1. @johnsalvatier points out a fundamental feature of #invention, whether in research or creating technology (thread) You have a problem and can see/measure misc. details of it. Some of these are key to solving the problem, and they are right before your eyes. But they are INTRINSICALLY not distinguishable from the rest until you know how to solve the problem=which ones are important.
Dec 5, 2019 4 tweets 7 min read
Nostalgic to be back at Bay Area Aging Meeting #BAAM. Shortly after moving to the Bay, I remember being blown away that this free, local symposium was of the same caliber as a Keystone meeting. Meeting is bigger than ever, as #agingbiology goes mainstream. #creatingtime. Great talks by students and postdocs from @BrunetLab, @wysscoray lab, @czbiohub, @RobertoZoncu lab, @VilledaLab, and many more. Other than the keynote by @DMSabatini, everything is focused on giving #trainees a chance to present unpublished work.💚